How Do You Check Tire Tread Wear?
Maintaining adequate tread on your tires is a key safety check. Without adequate tread, tires can lose their grip on the road, especially in wet weather. Worn tires can be responsible for hydroplaning and other kinds of potentially dangerous accidents, and the Consumer Reports website notes that even slightly worn tires have less traction that new tires. Checking the tread on your tires is a simple procedure you can perform at home through visual inspection and a U.S. penny. Examine your tires visually. Commercial tires for personal automobiles and trucks have built-in tread wear indicators, which are hard rubber pieces that lie across the treads and become visible after about 1/16th of an inch worth of wear. Look at the tracks your tires have made in soft dirt, mud or snow. Sometimes you will see a pattern the tread wear indicators create. This is usually a “blank” spot punctuating the tire tracks, or may be a line that appears perpendicular to the rest of the tread markings. If you s
